Villagers: Govt is using gang rape to kill Pathalgarhi movement

Kochang village (Khunti district): The revival of the age-old tradition of Pathalgarhi, by which tribal communities demarcate their village boundaries, as a movement demanding adivasi autonomy has met strong resistance from the government and the administration. The latest incident, in which police linked the movement with the gang rape of five women on Tuesday, brought up yet again the divide between the present-day government and the traditional ‘rulers’. Over the past year, the Pathalgarhi movement has expanded from Jharkhand to Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, with tribals erecting giant stone slabs to demarcate the area of their village’s jurisdiction and the claim to the supremacy of the gram sabha. The legitimacy of this claim lies upon Sections 13 (3), 19 (5) (6) and 244 (1) of the Fifth Schedule. “Our movement is treated as if it demands two separate Constitutions. What we want, in fact, is that provisions in the Indian Constitution be followed,” said John Johans Tiru, a member of gram sabha who represented Kalicharan Munda, the traditional gram pradhan at the village meeting, on Friday. On Thursday, Ranchi range DIG of police AV Homkar stirred the hornets’ nest by issuing a statement that the alleged gang-rape of five women was the handiwork of those involved in Pathalgarhi movement. “The victims in their statement have told police that the culprits questioned them for coming to a prohibited zone, where Pathalgarhi disallows intrusion of outsiders. They also threatened them against entering their village for propaganda of government agenda,” Khunti SP Ashwani Kumar Sinha said. Based on the statements police concluded that the Pathalgarhi movement activists raped the women and tortured the men in the team as punishment for entering their premises, where outsiders are reportedly not allowed. TOI’s follow-up on these statements, however, revealed a different story.

Those propagating Pathalgarhi to assert the rights of the gram sabha lashed out at the police administration for defaming them and announced through a gram sabha that they are not going to cooperate with the police investigation. “Whatever we say gets distorted. Police have done nothing but shown us in poor light with no facts to base their allegations on. We can’t cooperate with their probe,” a villager at the gram sabha said. The members of the gram sabha dared the government to come up with a written statement and give an explanation of Section 13(3) and 244 (1) of the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. “These are special provisions giving traditional rule of the tribals a place over and above the governance system that was in place after adoption of the Constitution on January 26, 1950,” one of the activists of Pathalgarhi movement, unwilling to be identified, said.